Why You Need Digital Marketing

With a huge number of businesses and freelancers to compete with, and often a  small budget to work with, it can be difficult for creative freelancers to get their name out there and reach potential clients. Building your brand via digital media and making the services you offer clear and accessible online has never been more important. What’s more, making the move to fully utilise digital marketing is only going to become easier and more beneficial. If you’re still not entirely sold on the idea of investing more time and effort into digital marketing, the benefits listed here should persuade you…

 

It’s Fair (kind of). You can compete with other freelancers and businesses regardless of their size or marketing budget. Online, it’s the quality of your site, social media and content that count, not the amount of money you have spent, that will allow you to win over clients. More money can however mean that you can reach a  much larger audience. This puts bigger businesses at an advantage, but remember boosting to reach a larger audience is almost pointless if the content doesn’t resonate with the audience.

 

 It can be Cheap. With digital marketing, it’s easy to develop and execute an effective marketing  campaign for very little cost. Digital marketing can potentially replace more expensive traditional media forms such as magazine adverts and directory listings. The only part of digital marketing that requires money to be spent is if you wish to boost posts to reach a larger audience, but even so this is often much less expensive than traditional marketing.

 

It’s easy to measure results. You can see exactly what is and isn’t working in real time with digital media. There are a variety of tools available to help you monitor traffic and engagement on your site and on social media. Tools like Facebook Insights and Google Analytics report data showing exactly what is and isn’t working, so you can adjust the content you produce accordingly.

 

It’s easy to see success. You can see improvements to your business that occurred due to your digital marketing efforts straight away. You can watch numbers of visitors and subscribers increase, and monitor changes in peak trading times and conversion rates in real time. Whereas  with traditional marketing, there is really no way of knowing which customers you are reaching and engaging, and when.

 

It’s easier to develop your brand. The more content you produce and the more contact you have with consumers, the more recognisable you become. If your audience see your brand name, logo and activity online and through social media a few times a day or week, they will remember you much more easily than if they only saw your adverts once a week or less. Utilising social media fully, you can become memorable in a short amount of time, meaning you can then focus your efforts more closely on telling your brand story, communicating your values and ultimately selling products to customers who know and like your brand.

 

It’s going to reach far more people. With a website and multiple social media accounts, you can take advantage of the huge amount of the potential customers you could be reaching. More than 3.2 billion people have access to the internet and Facebook alone has 1.71 billion active users. Though not all of these will be potential customers, the number of people you can access via digital marketing completely outweighs the number of people you can reach through magazine or billboard advertisements.

 

It’s Instant. You can upload content anywhere at anytime provided that you have access to the internet, and aside from some boosting and ads, you do not have to wait for content to be approved before it is published. This means you can keep potential customers up to date in real time about what you are working on, as well as respond to relevant news, events and viral trends as they are happening.

 

 It allows for more creative freedom. When uploading content to your site or social media, you can choose whether you communicate through words, graphics, photographs, video or a combination of these. Provided you follow advertising laws and ethical standards, and the guidelines set out by any social platforms you use, you can pretty much create whatever content you see fit.  It also allows you to create content within your area of knowledge, for example, a movie image specialist can create video content for digital media, rather than relying on flyers and business cards that do not fully showcase their skills.

 

What Does This Mean For Freelancers?

So as you can see, there are a lot of benefits to utilising digital media platforms as part of your marketing strategy. But it’s not about simply recognising the benefits of digital marketing, it’s also about learning how to utilise digital marketing effectively.

For all freelancers, it is absolutely essential that they are reaching the right customers online in order to ensure a constant flow of work. At Creative Alliance we believe that the right training can make a huge difference to how well you market yourself. Apply now to our Digital Marketing Course to learn how to plan, schedule and deliver effective marketing that will get you customers and save you money.